ACP Seminar (Astronomy - Cosmology - Particle Physics)

Speaker: Ahmet Emir Gumrukcuoglu (IPMU)
Title: Inflation, reheating and flat direction preheating
Date (JST): Thu, Nov 04, 2010, 13:00 - 14:00
Place: Seminar Room A
Related File: 365.pdf
Abstract: The MSSM has several flat directions, which can naturally be excited during inflation. The perturbative computation of their decay rate shows that the flat directions can be present long after inflaton decays. If this is the case, they can affect reheating by (i) providing a large mass to gauge bosons, hence delaying thermalization, (ii) dominating the energy density of the universe.

In contrast, if flat directions decay quickly through nonperturbative processes, the condensate may be depleted long before it can play any relevant role on reheating. I will talk about the general mechanism for this decay and show a few cases of toy models and MSSM examples where it is realized. I will then discuss a work in progress, where nonlinear effects are included for determination of the time scale of thermalization of produced particles and for the computation of gravitational wave signal from this explosive decay.